QUARRELLING.
UARRELS tend to become less serious. The type of
the common quarrel has changed. It is not so long- lived and not so intense. In this country, at any rate, a quarrel is never inherited. The criminal archaeologist must look elsewhere for survivals of this diabolical effect of the " dead hand." On the contrary, one's children will seldont take up even one's prejudices. The reflection brings with it an odd sense of finality, and is not without a grim humour. Our distastes must die with us; along with so much else, they are of value only to the owner. There is no use in detesting Mr. Smith or Mrs. Jones nowadays. It will not make our sous and daughters in the least less likely to fall in love with his or her children. In a few years' time they will make a. joke of the whole "misunderstanding." It will be put away among other acid recollections—rueful to us, ridiculous to them. There is some sort of sacrilege in ridiculing a quarrel, unholy though most quarrels are. Richard Baxter said that no old man rejoices in the memory of a quarrel. One inclines at first to deny this. Many men repeat their quarrels as if they had rejoiced in them. On the other hand, if we saw. the motives of the repetition we might find that it did not put the divine in the wrong. A quarrel often gives opportunity for a display of wit, and a man anxious to repeat his own bons mots may like to give them the dramatic effect to be obtained only in contrast to his neighbour's stupidity. This is not quite the same thing as taking pleasure in a recollection of ill-feeling. Again, a man may repeat the matter to reassure himself that he was in the right, or simply to hold the conversation, or be conspicuous. A quarrel often makes a good story. The animus is usually out of it before it is done with as a conversational asset. It takes on the aspect of a verbal triumph, changes its character, becomes inaccurate in detail, is known by the teller to be half- imaginary, and finally becomes not a memory but an invention. Vanity at last destroys the grudge.
But if there is little joy in recollecting a quarrel, there are still some people who will keep up a quarrel as long as they live. There is no question here of recollection. The offence is ever-present to them. In some strange way their grievance seems to exalt them in their own eyes. They walk through life with a sense of distinction. It becomes part of their dignity ; they feel as if it would humiliate them to set the whole matter aside as a "bygone." They could forgive themselves anything except the thought that they had given in. As a rule, some symptom of an unsound mind can be found to account for this very old-fashioned piece of wrongheadedness. We are not, be it remembered, regarding the refusal of two angry persons to see one another again in the light of a kept-up quarrel. At times the complete separation of the persons offended would seem the only method of damping down those fires of indigna- tion and even of hate which cannot be altogether quenched, but which may smoulder out in a perfectly harmless manner if the two opponents be kept apart. Such quarrels have their origin, as a rule, in antipathy, and antipathy is a far harder thing to get over than injury. It is easier to forgive a man for being despicable than for being detestable. There can be no possible harm in hoping we may never see an enemy again. We wish him no ill, and in depriving him of our acquaintance we deprive him of what can hardly be accounted in his eyes a pleasure.
There is, we imagine, a great deal less of frivolous litigation than there used to be. Tiny offences, such as the perhaps unconscious appropriation of a few feet of land which no one could want, have caused otherwise sensible men to lose hundreds of pounds. The stories which men of this generation relate of their litigious forebears suggest an expensive game rather than a quarrel. A lawsuit would keep them sometimes for years in a state of delighted occupation. They wanted something to play at, such men as these. A hobby, a
moderate amount of speculation, a succession of newspapers to quicken their wits or even to arouse their wrath, would have kept them out of these quarrels, in which, after all, there was far more folly than rancour. There are, of course, and there will always be, certain men and certain women who were born to protest. They are, as a rule, people of high principle and very definite views. They are very conscious of their own high principles, and live in a state of perpetual amazement at the inconsistency of the ordinary world. Against such men and women Nature would seem to have a spite. They are endowed with good characters and good heads, and then cursed with complete ineffectiveness. They cannot give in, and the person who cannot give in cannot co-operate. They go through life conscientiously protesting and quarrelling and standing out for trifles, without rancour, without spite, without aim, and without success.
An ingrained habit of contradiction is very often mistaken for quarrelsomeness. It is quite a different thing, and is often accompanied by a very real geniality of disposition. The contradictor has not the slightest idea that he has been disagreeable, and the habit as a rule means nothing but a certain want of social sympathy. The contradictions person follows a rule of thumb for keeping up conversation; he sees that fierce contradiction has some of the effect of wit. It startles the hearer and rouses him to defend himself. The people completely silenced by contradiction are few. Unfortunately for the man who has formed the habit of contradiction, they are often those best worth talking to. The talkers who really desire the truth, who do not talk in order to take intellectual tricks, will never make friends with the habitual contradictor. They are not angered; they are bored. The contradictor and the buffoon have something in common; neither of them is completely civilized. Even the contradictor, however, is becoming milder in these polite days.
It would be absurd, however, to maintain that the old wicked delight in a quarrel is dead. Nearly all of us have felt the excitement and the pleasure of it. It is difficult to say what it comes of. It is very often a righteous cover (most men firmly believe they are in the right when they are quarrelling) for a display of that fierceness which is not yet oat of the best of us. We want an outlet for our fierce mood —for the mood which, when we look back on it, makes us believe in possession. The better the man, the juster his quarrels, the more completely he will be able to direct this fierceness into a good cause. An absolute inability to quarrel is hardly a virtue—at least, it is a virtue which is seldom found in company with other virtues. It goes, as a rule, with a light mind.
The art of giving in is, on the other hand, a great art. It should, however, be acquired; it should not come by nature; it ought to be studied deliberately. It is the very essence of conciliation. Perhaps when it has been acquired by a strong man or a strong woman it is the most endearing of all the social arts. It means, as a rule, a correct sense of proportion, as opposed to the crude sense of justice on which quarrelsome people so often pride themselves. A crude sense of justice is an impossible guide of life. Everyone admits that in ordinary domestic life peace and happiness are preserved by this art of giving in, which in an ordinary household some one is bound to practise if strife is to be avoided. A man or woman who has cultivated indifference about little things has made some progress in the art of life. It is, however, a vast pity that outside domestic life an odour of disgrace still attaches to the idea of giving in. Who that has sat upon a committee but will agree with us !
The counsel to "give place unto wrath" is wise in the extreme. The smaller philanthropic machines, which are generally worked through committees, are constantly at a standstill because people are ashamed to take the apostle's advice. It goes without saying that it is sometimes as necessary to bold out—but not often. Sonic of the greatest reforms in the world have been brought about by giving in. Nothing else ...could stop the vendetta. Somebody must be willing to sacrifice that wild justice which belongs to an earlier world and accept the fact of past injury, and there leave it. What misery might have been spared to the world if only it had not been considered a virtue to " hold out," quite apart from the cause in which the holding out was practised ! The art of giving in is one of the newest of the arts, a pure product of civilization. The result of its wider practice cannot be foreseen. At present its most conspicuous effect is the change which has come over the spirit of the quarrelsome.
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